


Fire on Fire

by tolakasa



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Apocalypse, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-03
Updated: 2007-05-03
Packaged: 2017-11-14 22:50:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/520327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tolakasa/pseuds/tolakasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war has been thwarted, so the demons find another way to strike.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fire on Fire

The Impala dies outside Cheyenne, her engine choked with ash. They leave her on the highway--well, Dean _thinks_ it's the highway, not that anybody can tell anymore--with all the other gray ghosts of cars and trucks left behind.

They raid stores through town for supplies left behind, so focused on the task that when they see a pack of vampires stroll by in the noontime twilight they just let them go. They have to go east. The last report they heard said the ashfall is just barely reaching Iowa.

Every damn volcano from Yellowstone west, from Mexico to Alaska, has gone up. Names that a month ago meant nothing to anyone are now curse words: Rainier, Yellowstone, Fourpeaked, Garibaldi, Wrangell, Edziza. Nothing major, no disastrous explosions, no pyroclastic clouds or lava flows, just ash.

_Just_ ash.

Geologists can't explain it. They don't know that this is all part of the demons' plans.

All these years they've fought to prevent the war. It never occurred to them that the demons might not _need_ the war.

Sam dies somewhere in Nebraska. He's been coughing blood for a week, doing his best to hide it, but the eighth day Dean wakes up and finds that Sam's lungs just gave up in the night. The geologists promised that it would be quick, that the ash would mix with moisture in the lungs to make sludge and death would be caused by suffocation. Dean's no expert, but he can tell from the puddle of blood on Sam's pillow (no point breaking into an abandoned house if you're not going to use the beds) that that's not what happened.

Maybe because it's not a natural eruption. Who knows. Who _cares?_

Dean doesn't bother building a pyre. He just takes Sam's pack and torches the house. Nobody's coming back here, and Sammy always wanted a real house.

The ash drifts like snow, drifts measured in feet, not inches. He finds no one alive. If they didn't run, the demons have gotten them; if they survived both, then they've starved to death or died when the sharp-edged ash sliced their lungs to bits.

Dean keeps going because he doesn't know what else to do. His whole life, stopping has never been an option. He wakes every morning expecting to start coughing, but he never does.

He doesn't know where he is when the end comes. Signs and landmarks, like day and night, ceased to have meaning a long time ago. The ash is still falling. That's all he knows.

The earth trembles and screams and finally tears. Entire buildings collapse into the angry heart of the planet, and hell erupts around him.

The world ends in fire.

Dean's not surprised.

Fire ended his world a long time ago.


End file.
